But we have other privileges; God's love in Christ is not only an object which gathers—it is an activity which does so. Love is relative; it acts and shows itself. Hence God has acted. It is not the silent depths of self-consciousness which heathenism made of God, as mere intellect, though erroneously supposing matter equally eternal receiving merely form from God; though it then became active in generating thoughts—and, delighted with them objectively, became active in creation to produce them according to truth. In this scheme they justly made primeval darkness the mother of all things. But such is not our God. These, save in benefits sensibly known in creation, knew not love in God. Jesus has revealed Him, and we thus know Him to be love, and light, too. Blessed knowledge! It is, as given to us in the word, eternal life; and this life is occupied with it, as we have seen, with the Father and the Son. But we can equally say that we know this sweet and blessed truth: “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” It is the activity of love which is the power of gathering. “He gave himself... that he might gather into one the children of God, which were scattered abroad.” Even in Israel: “How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” Here we have not only the attractive, sanctifying object bringing into fellowship, but the activity of love, which acts, gives itself, in order to gather; in this we are allowed to have a part. It is this, while sanctifying and maintaining His holiness, making us partakers of it, reveals God and gathers weary souls.
Now this alone is the proper principle and power of gathering. I do not say on which souls are gathered; for that is clearly holiness-separation from evil in which alone communion is maintained—or darkness would have fellowship with light. But love gathers; and this is as evident to the Christian as that it gathers to holiness, and on the principle of it. For when would the mind of man separate from and leave the evil in which it lives, which is its nature, alas! as to its actual desires, and the sphere in which it lives? Never! Alas! its will and lusts are there—it is enmity against God. This is what the presenting of grace in Jesus has so solemnly proved. Law was never given to gather; it was the rule of a people already with God—or a convicter of sin. Sin does not gather to God, nor law; and one or other is all man's state unless grace acts. Besides, grace alone fully reveals God; and hence without grace that to which we are to be gathered is not manifested. Grace alone reaches the heart so as to bring it all short of this is responsibility merely, and failure. It is Christ gathers, and hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us.
Indeed, truth itself is never known till grace comes. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The law told man what he ought to be. It did not tell him what he was. It told him of life if he obeyed, of a curse if he disobeyed; but it did not tell him that God was love; it spoke of responsibility; it said, “Do this and live.” All this was perfect in its place, but it told neither what man was nor what God was; that remained concealed; but that is the truth. The truth is not what ought to be, but what is—the reality of all relationships as they are, and the revelation of Him who, if there are any, must be the center of them. Now that could not be told without grace, for man was a ruined sinner, and God is love. And how tell, moreover, that all relationship was gone—for judgment is not a relationship, but the consequence of the breach of one—as the truth of any existing one, but in the revelation of that grace which formed one of this very ground by divine power? Hence we read “of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures “; that incorruptible seed of the word. Hence Christ is the truth. For sin, grace, God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, even, are revealed as they are; what man is in perfection, in relationship with God; what man's alienation from God; what obedience, what disobedience, what holiness, what sin, what God, what man, what heaven, what earth; nothing but what finds itself placed where it is in reference to God, and with the fullest revelation of Himself, while His counsels even are brought out, and of which Christ is the center. Hence grace is the acting power in, and alone capable of, revealing truth; for Christ's being here is grace-His working effectual grace. Now, the very existence of such an object and such a power would prove a gathering power, gathering into unity, for it must, being divine, gather to itself; yet, we are not left to abstract consequences, however practically familiar to every renewed soul who does and must know, that all such are drawn together in Christ. The word of God is plain: He gave Himself to “gather together into one the children of God which are scattered abroad.” I speak of these things as characterizing the power which gathers. Christ, though the truth itself, yet, while here, was lonely truth: no new relationship was established on a divine basis for other men. Hence presented grace was rejected grace; the corn of wheat abode alone; but, dying, redemption was accomplished and atonement made. He was no longer “straitened"; the grace and truth shut up, so to speak, into His own heart, could now flow freely forth. The highest love was shown; and sin in man, instead of hindering its application and barring relationship, was its object, at least that as to which it was displayed; and thus, therefore, He gathers. Divine righteousness supplants-what, indeed, never existed, though it was called for—human righteousness; divine life, mere human life; and God finds His glory in salvation. Grace reigns through righteousness.
I believe I have said enough to make what is in my mind plain; and I am more anxious to state than to insist on it. In the full divine sense, without grace, there is neither truth nor holiness (out of God, of course, I mean), save as holiness may be applied to the elect angels—nor can be; because it is impossible that a sinner can he with God but on the ground and by the power and activity of grace. The power of unity is grace; and as man is a sinner and departed from God, the power of gathering is grace—grace manifested in Jesus on the cross, and bringing us to God in heaven, and bringing us in Him who is gone there. This is holiness: certainly the cross was not acquiescence in evil.
J. N. D.
(Concluded from page 304)
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