Knowledge of the Holy Part 6

In Christian experience there is a highly satisfying love content that distinguishes it from all other religions and elevates it to heights far beyond even the purest and n.o.blest philosophy. This love content is more than a thing; it is G.o.d Himself in the midst of His Church singing over His people. True Christian joy is the heart's harmonious response to the Lord's song of love.

Thou hidden love of G.o.d, whose height, Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows, I see from far Thy beauteous light, Inly I sigh for Thy repose; My heart is pained, nor can it be At rest till it finds rest in Thee.

Gerhard Tersteegen

Chapter 21.

The Holiness of G.o.d Glory be to G.o.d on high. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we wors.h.i.+p Thee, for Thy great glory. Lord, I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me which I knew not. I heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee and I abhor myself in dust and ashes. O Lord, I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, yea, twice, but I will proceed no further.

But while I was musing the fire burned. Lord, I must speak of Thee, lest by my silence I offend against the generation of Thy children. Behold, Thou has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. O Lord, forsake me not. Let me show forth Thy strength unto this generation and Thy power to everyone that is to come. Raise up prophets and seers in Thy Church who shall magnify Thy glory and through Thine almighty Spirit restore to Thy people the knowledge of the holy. Amen.

The moral shock suffered by us through our mighty break with the high will of heaven has left us all with a permanent trauma affecting every part of our nature. There is disease both in ourselves and in our environment.

The sudden realization of his personal depravity came like a stroke from heaven upon the trembling heart of Isaiah at the moment when he had his revolutionary vision of the holiness of G.o.d. His pain-filled cry, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts,' expresses the feeling of every man who has discovered himself under his disguises and has been confronted with an inward sight of the holy whiteness that is G.o.d. Such an experience cannot but be emotionally violent.

Until we have seen ourselves as G.o.d see us, we are not likely to be much disturbed over conditions around us as long as they do not get so far out of hand as to threaten our comfortable way of life. We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing. We are not disappointed that we do not find all truth in our teachers of faith, fulness in our politicians or complete honesty in our merchants or full trustworthiness in our friends That we may continue to exist we make such laws as are necessary to protect us from our fellow men and let it go at that.

Neither the writer nor the reader of these words is qualified to appreciate the holiness of G.o.d. Quite literally a new channel must be cut through the desert of our minds to allow the sweet waters of truth that will heal our great sickness to flow in. We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of.

G.o.d's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear G.o.d's power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine.

Only the Spirit of the Holy One can impart to the human spirit the knowledge of the holy. Yet as electric power flows only through a conductor, so the Spirit flows through truth and must find same measure of truth in the mind before He can illuminate the heart. Faith wakes at the voice of truth but responds to no other sound. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of G.o.d.' Theological knowledge is the medium through which the Spirit flows into the human heart, yet there must be humble penitence in the heart before truth can produce faith. The Spirit of G.o.d is the Spirit of truth. It is possible to have same truth in the mind without having the Spirit in the heart, but it is never possible to have the Spirit apart from truth.

In his penetrating study of the holy, Rudolf Otto makes a strong case for the presence in the human mind of something he names the numinous,' by which, apparently, he means a sense that there is in the world a vague, incomprehensible Something, the Mysterium Tremendum, the awesome Mystery, surrounding and enfolding the universe. This is an It, an awful Thing, and can never be intellectually conceived, only sensed and felt in the depths of the human spirit. It remains as a permanent religious instinct, a feeling for that unnamed, undiscoverable Presence that runs quicksilverlike through creation's veins' and sometimes stuns the mind by confronting it with a supernatural, suprarational manifestation of itself. The man thus confronted is brought down and overwhelmed and can only tremble and be silent.

This nonrational dread, this feeling for the uncreated Mystery in the world, is back of all religion. The pure religion of the Bible, no less than the basest animism of the naked tribesman, exists only because this basic instinct is present in human nature. Of course, the difference between the religion of an Isaiah or a Paul and that of the animist is that one has truth and the other has not; he has only the numinous' instinct. He feels after an unknown G.o.d, but an Isaiah and a Paul have found the true G.o.d through His own self-disclosure in the inspired Scriptures.

The feeling for mystery, even for the Great Mystery, is basic in human nature and indispensable to religious faith, but it is not enough. Because of it men may whisper, That awful Thing,' but they do not cry, Mine Holy One!' In the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures G.o.d carries forward His self-revelation and gives it personality and moral content. This awful Presence is shown to be not a Thing but a moral Being with all the warm qualities of genuine personality. More than this, He is the absolute quintessence of moral excellence, infinitely perfect in righteousness, purity, rect.i.tude, and incomprehensible holiness. And in all this He is uncreated, self-sufficient and beyond the power of human thought to conceive or human speech to utter.

Through the self-revelation of G.o.d in the Scriptures and the illumination of the Holy Spirit the Christian gains everything and loses nothing. To his idea of G.o.d there are added the twin concepts of personality and moral character, but there remains the original sense of wonder and fear in the presence of the world-filling Mystery. Today his heart may leap up with the happy cry, Abba Father, my Lord and my G.o.d!' Tomorrow he may kneel with the delighted trembling to admire and adore the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.

Holy is the way G.o.d is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because He is holy, His attributes are holy; that is, whatever we think of as belonging to G.o.d must be thought of as holy. G.o.d is holy and He has made holiness the moral condition necessary to the health of His universe. Sin's temporary presence in the world only accents this. Whatever is holy is healthy; evil is a moral sickness that must end ultimately in death. The formation of the language itself suggests this, the English word holy deriving from the Anglo-Saxon halig, hal, meaning, well, whole.'

Since G.o.d's first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure. To preserve His creation G.o.d must destroy whatever would destroy it. When He arises to put down iniquity and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry. Every wrathful judgment in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation. The holiness of G.o.d, the wrath of G.o.d, and the health of the creation are inseparably united. G.o.d's wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that take the life of her child.

G.o.d is holy with an absolute holiness that knows no degrees, and this He cannot impart to His creatures. But there is a relative and contingent holiness which He shares with angels and seraphim in heaven and with redeemed men on earth as their preparation for heaven. This holiness G.o.d can and does impart to His children. He shares it with them by imputation and by impartation, and because He has made it available to them through the blood of the Lamb, He requires it of them. To Israel first and later to His Church G.o.d spoke, saying, Be ye holy; for I am holy.' He did not say Be ye as holy as I am holy,' for that would be to demand of us absolute holiness, something that belongs to G.o.d alone.

Before the uncreated fire of G.o.d's holiness angels veil their faces. Yea, the heavens are not clean, and the stars are not pure in His sight. No honest man can say I am holy,' but neither is any honest man willing to ignore the solemn words of the inspired writer, Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.'

Caught in this dilemma, what are we Christians to do? We must like Moses cover ourselves with faith and humility while we steal a quick look at the G.o.d whom no man can see and live. The broken and the contrite heart He will not despise. We must hide our unholiness in the wounds of Christ as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock while the glory of G.o.d pa.s.sed by. We must take refuge from G.o.d in G.o.d. Above all we must believe that G.o.d sees us perfect in His Son while He disciplines and chastens and purges us that we may be partakers of His holiness.

By faith and obedience, by constant meditation on the holiness of G.o.d, by loving righteousness and hating iniquity, by a growing acquaintance with the Spirit of holiness, we can acclimate ourselves to the fellows.h.i.+p of the saints on earth and prepare ourselves for the eternal companions.h.i.+p of G.o.d and the saints above. Thus, as they say when humble believers meet, we will have a heaven to go to heaven in.

How dread are Thine eternal years, O everlasting Lord!

By prostrate spirits day and night Incessantly adored!

How beautiful, how beautiful The sight of Thee must be, Thine endless wisdom, boundless power, And awful purity!

Oh how I fear Thee, living G.o.d!

With deepest, tenderest fears, And wors.h.i.+p Thee with trembling hope, And penitential tears.

Frederick W. Faber

Chapter 22.

The Sovereignty of G.o.d Who wouldst not fear Thee, O Lord G.o.d of Hosts, most high and most terrible? For Thou art Lord alone. Thou has made heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth and all things that are therein, and in Thy hand is the soul of every living thing, Thou sittest king upon the flood; yea, Thou sittest king forever. Thou art a great king over all the earth. Thou art clothed with strength; honor and majesty are before Thee.

Amen.

G.o.d's sovereignty is the attribute by which He rules His entire creation, and to be sovereign G.o.d must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free. The reasons are these: Were there even one datum of knowledge, however small, unknown to G.o.d, His rule would break down at that point. To be Lord over all the creation, He must possess all knowledge. And were G.o.d lacking one infinitesimal modic.u.m of power, that lack would end His reign and undo His kingdom; that one stray atom of power would belong to someone else and G.o.d would be a limited ruler and hence not sovereign.

Furthermore, His sovereignty requires that He be absolutely free, which means simply that He must be free to do whatever He wills to do anywhere at any time to carry out His eternal purpose in every single detail without interference. Were He less than free He must be less than sovereign.

To grasp the idea of unqualified freedom requires a vigorous effort of the mind. We are not psychologically conditioned to understand freedom except in its imperfect forms. Our concepts of it have been shaped in a world where no absolute freedom exists. Here each natural object is dependent upon many other objects, and that dependence limits its freedom.

Wordsworth at the beginning of his Prelude' rejoiced that he had escaped the city where he had long been pent up and was now free, free as a bird to settle where I will.' But to be free a bird is not to be free at all. The naturalist knows that the supposedly free bird actually lives its entire life in a cage made of fears, hungers, and instincts; it is limited by weather conditions, varying air pressures, the local food supply, predatory beasts, and that strangest of all bonds, the irresistible compulsion to stay within the small plot of land and air a.s.signed it by birdland comity. The freest bird is, along with every other created thing, held in constant check by a net of necessity. Only G.o.d is free.

G.o.d is said to be absolutely free because no one and no thing can hinder Him or compel Him or stop Him. He is able to do as He pleases always, everywhere, forever. To be thus free means also that He must possess universal authority. That He has unlimited power we know from the Scriptures and may deduce from certain other of His attributes. But what about His authority?

Even to discuss the authority of Almighty G.o.d seems a bit meaningless, and to question it would be absurd. Can we imagine the Lord G.o.d of Hosts having to request permission of anyone or to apply for anything to a higher body? To whom would G.o.d go for permission? Who is higher than the Highest? Who is mightier than the Almighty? Whose position antedates that of the Eternal? At whose throne would G.o.d kneel? Where is the greater one to whom He must appeal? Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no G.o.d.'

The sovereignty of G.o.d is a fact well established in the Scriptures and declared aloud by the logic of truth. But admittedly it raises certain problems which have not to this time been satisfactorily solved: These are mainly two. The first is the presence in the creation of those things which G.o.d cannot approve, such as evil, pain, and death. If G.o.d is sovereign He could have prevented their coming into existence. Why did He not do so?

The Zend-Avesta, sacred book of Zoroastrianism, loftiest of the great non-Biblical religions, got around this difficulty neatly enough by postulating a theological dualism. There were two G.o.ds, Ormazd and Ahriman, and these between them created the world. The good Ormazd made all good things and the evil Ahriman made the rest. It was quite simple. Ormazd had no sovereignty to worry about, and apparently did not mind sharing his prerogatives with another.

For the Christian this explanation will not do, for it flatly contradicts the truth taught so emphatically throughout the whole Bible, that there is one G.o.d and that He alone created the heaven and the earth and all the things that are therein. G.o.d's attributes are such as to make impossible the existence of another G.o.d. The Christian admits that he does not have the final answer to the riddle of permitted evil. But he knows what that answer is not. And he knows that the Zend-Avesta does not have it either.

While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereign wisdom G.o.d has permitted evil to exist in carefully restricted areas of His creation, a kind of fugitive outlaw whose activities are temporary and limited in scope. In doing this G.o.d has acted according to His infinite wisdom and goodness. More than that no one knows at present; and more than that no one needs to know. The name of G.o.d is sufficient guarantee of the perfection of His works.

Another real problem created by the doctrine of the divine sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If G.o.d rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice? And if he can not exercise freedom of choice, how can he be held responsible for his conduct? Is he not a mere puppet whose actions are determined by a behind-the-scenes G.o.d who pulls the strings as it pleases Him?

The attempt to answer these questions has divided the Christian church neatly into two camps which have borne the names of two distinguished theologians, Jacobus Arminius and John Calvin. Most Christians are content to get into one camp or the other and deny either sovereignty to G.o.d or free will to man. It appears possible, however, to reconcile these two positions without doing violence to either, although the effort that follows may prove deficient to partisans of one camp or the other.

Here is my view: G.o.d sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of G.o.d but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom G.o.d has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou?' Man's will is free because G.o.d is sovereign. A G.o.d less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

Perhaps a homely ill.u.s.tration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are several scores of pa.s.sengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man's freedom and the sovereignty of G.o.d. The mighty liner of G.o.d's sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. G.o.d moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm a.s.surance of future well-being.

We know that G.o.d will fulfil every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of G.o.d and that the righteous will s.h.i.+ne forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that G.o.d's perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of G.o.d the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.

Toward all this G.o.d is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circ.u.mstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omninpotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. G.o.d is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.

In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad field of G.o.d's sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. G.o.d will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.

Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of G.o.d, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. G.o.d has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of G.o.d. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.

Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on G.o.d's side is on the winning side and can not lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and can not win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of G.o.d we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we can not go.

The whole matter of moral choice centers around Jesus Christ. Christ stated it plainly: He that is not with me is against me,' and No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.' The gospel message embodies three distinct elements: an announcement, a command, and a call. It announces the good news of redemption accomplished in mercy; it commands all men everywhere to repent and it calls all men to surrender to the terms of grace by believing on Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

We must all choose whether we will obey the gospel or turn away in unbelief and reject its authority. Our choice is our own, but the consequences of the choice have already been determined by the sovereign will of G.o.d, and from this there is no appeal.

The Lord descended from above, And bowed the heavens most high, And underneath His feet He cast The darkness of the sky.

On cherubim and seraphim Full royally He rode, And on the wings of mighty winds Came flying all abroad.

He sat serene upon the floods, Their fury to restrain; And He, as sovereign Lord and King, For evermore shall reign.

Psalm paraphrase, by Thomas Sternhold

Chapter 23.

The Open Secret When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from her long Babylonian captivity and the name of G.o.d be glorified in her again as of old. Yet we must not think of the Church as an anonymous body, a mystical religious abstraction. We Christians are the Church and whatever we do is what the Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual.

What can we plain Christians do to bring back the departed glory? Is there some secret we may learn? Is there a formula for personal revival we can apply to the present situation, to our own situation? The answer to these questions is yes.

Yet the answer may easily disappoint some persons, for it is anything but profound. I bring no esoteric cryptogram, no mystic code to be painfully deciphered. I appeal to no hidden law of the unconscious, no occult knowledge meant only for the few. The secret is an open one which the wayfaring man may read. It is simply the old and ever new counsel: Acquaint thyself with G.o.d. To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of G.o.d.

But the G.o.d we must see is not the utilitarian G.o.d who is having such a run of popularity today, whose chief claim to men's attention is His ability to bring them success in their various undertakings and who for that reason is being cajoled and flattered by everyone who wants a favor. The G.o.d we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, G.o.d the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise G.o.d, our Saviour. He it is that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, who bringeth out His starry host by number and calleth them all by name through the greatness of His power, who seeth the works of man as vanity, who putteth no confidence in princes and asks no counsel of kings.

Knowledge of such a Being cannot be gained by study alone. It comes by a wisdom the natural man knows nothing of, neither can know, because it is spiritually discerned. To know G.o.d is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely given. As sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy G.o.d is a free gift to men who are open to receive it.

But this knowledge is difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate nature of fallen man does not take kindly to them.

Let me present a brief summary of these conditions as taught by the Bible and repeated through the centuries by the holiest, sweetest saints the world has ever known: First, we must forsake our sins. The belief that a holy G.o.d cannot be known by men of confirmed evil lives is not new to the Christian religion. The Hebrew book, The Wisdom of Solomon, which antedates Christianity by many years, has the following pa.s.sage: Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth: think of the Lord with a good heart, and in simplicity of heart seek him. For he will be found of them that tempt him not; and showeth himself unto such as do not distrust him. For froward thoughts separate from G.o.d and his power, when it is tried, reproveth the unwise. For unto a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter; nor dwell in the body that is subject to sin. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without understanding, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in.' This same thought is found in various sayings throughout the inspired Scriptures, the best known probably being the words of Christ, Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see G.o.d.'

Second, there must be an utter committal of the whole life to Christ in faith. This is what it means to believe in Christ.' It involves a volitional and emotional attachment to Him accompanied by a firm purpose to obey Him in all things. This requires that we keep His commandments, carry our cross, and love G.o.d and our fellow men.

Third, there must be a reckoning of ourselves to have died unto sin and to be alive unto G.o.d in Christ Jesus, followed by a throwing open of the entire personality to the inflow of the Holy Spirit. Then we must practice whatever self-discipline is required to walk in the Spirit, and trample under our feet the l.u.s.ts of the flesh.

Fourth, we must boldly repudiate the cheap values of the fallen world and become completely detached in spirit from everything that unbelieving men set their hearts upon, allowing ourselves only the simplest enjoyments of nature which G.o.d has bestowed alike upon the just and the unjust.

Fifth, we must practice the art of long and loving meditation upon the majesty of G.o.d. This will take some effort, for the concept of majesty has all but disappeared from the human race. The focal point of man's interest is now himself. Humanism in its various forms has displaced theology as the key to the understanding of life. When the nineteenth-century poet Swinburne wrote, Glory to Man in the highest! for man is the master of things,' he gave to the modern world its new Te Deum. All this must be reversed by a deliberate act of the will and kept so by a patient effort of the mind.

G.o.d is a Person and can be known in increasing degrees of intimate acquaintance as we prepare our hearts for the wonder. It may be necessary for us to alter our former beliefs about G.o.d as the glory that gilds the Sacred Scriptures dawns over our interior lives. We may also need to break quietly and graciously with the lifeless textualism that prevails among the gospel churches, and to protest the frivolous character of much that pa.s.ses for Christianity among us. By this we may for the time lose friends and gain a pa.s.sing reputation for being holier-than-thou; but no man who permits the expectation of unpleasant consequences to influence him in a matter like this is fit for the kingdom of G.o.d.

Sixth, as the knowledge of G.o.d becomes more wonderful, greater service to our fellow men will become for us imperative. This blessed knowledge is not given to be enjoyed selfishly. The more perfectly we know G.o.d the more we will feel the desire to translate the new-found knowledge into deeds of mercy toward suffering humanity. The G.o.d who gave all to us will continue to give all through us as we come to know Him better.

Thus far we have considered the individual's personal relation to G.o.d, but like the ointment of a man's right hand, which by its fragrance betrayeth itself', any intensified knowledge of G.o.d will soon begin to affect those around us in the Christian community. And we must seek purposefully to share our increasing light with the fellow members of the household of G.o.d.

This we can best do by keeping the majesty of G.o.d in full focus in all our public services. Not only our private prayers should be filled with G.o.d, by our witnessing, our singing, our preaching, our writing should center around the Person of our holy, holy Lord and extol continually the greatness of His dignity and power. There is a glorified Man on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven faithfully representing us there. We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here.

END.