HOW much is heard today, in certain quarters, as to the beauty of Christ's earthly life! His character is extolled as that of the most perfect type of manhood. Admiration is expressed for His gentleness, His self-denying readiness to serve, His zeal for the blessing of men, His accessibility to sinners, His denunciations of hypocrisy, His wisdom in dealing with the various questions that were brought to Him, His unflinching determination to accomplish at all costs His divine mission.
All this is well. The blessed Savior is every bit as good as, and infinitely better than His most devoted followers can express. But as His wonderful character is dwelt upon again and again in glowing terms, there yet remains in the soul a feeling, often indefinable and unexpressed, of deep unsatisfied need.
“I am tired of beauty, and desperate about my own doing and undoing," writes one who feels the need of something further.
Yes, and it is not the exaltation of Christ upon the pinnacle of human perfection that will meet that need, though in His humanity He was always perfect.
What meets the desperate question of the sinner's doing and undoing is the death of Christ, with its wonderful and far-reaching results.
Take first the question of our DOING. What have we done? The answer may be given in one word: SINS. In thought, and word, and action we have sinned, and each sin cries aloud in the ear of a holy God for judgment.
Then as to our UNDOING. What is it that we have undone? This question can also be answered with a simple word: SELF. We have utterly and irretrievably undone and ruined ourselves, so that SELF can never be fit for God's presence, and can never be dealt with in any way by God but in righteous judgment.
Thank God, that in the death of Christ, one who feels desperate about his own doing and undoing may find a complete settlement of the difficulties that perplex him.
First of all, in the death of Christ a righteous foundation was laid for the forgiveness of sins. If free and full forgiveness is preached through a. risen and glorified Savior, it is all based upon the atoning work which He accomplished when He hung as the Sin-bearer on the Cross. Believing in Him, we can read substitution as we turn in thought to Calvary. He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree"; He "died for our sins" (1 Peter 2:24; 1 Cor. 15:3). Our doing, evil as it has been, has been perfectly atoned for by our Savior and Substitute. God has declared, in the most unmistakable way, His acceptance of that atoning work as all-sufficient, by raising the One Who did it, from the dead. And if He is so satisfied as to the end of our doings, by that work which wipes them all from His sight forever, may not we too be satisfied?
There yet remains the question of SELF to be considered—undone, ruined self. God in no wise undertakes to reconstitute SELF naturally. But in the death of Christ He has effected the complete removal of "self" from before Him. He reckons, that death as ours. All that "self" is morally, as a ruined, corrupt, and hopelessly reprobate thing, has been judged, condemned, and put out of court in the death of Christ.
What does, this, then involve? The annihilation or non-existence of the being? No. For God has so wondrously wrought that we—you and I—may be before Him for blessing altogether apart from that evil "self." We cannot be before Him on the ground that "self" is restored or improved, but we can be before Him on the ground that "self" has been judged and judicially removed in the death of His Son, and that our acceptance lies in another direction altogether, even in Christ.
Christ in glory is not only the measure of our acceptance. He is that; in Him we are brought to God in all the fragrance and perfection that is His. But He is our acceptance. We have no footing, no means of approach, no place in God's presence, but in Him.
Sharers of His risen life, we can be there, dwell there, abide there, even now. The power of all this for us lies in the Holy Spirit, by Whom we appropriate and enjoy the wonderful place in God's favor that He has given us in Christ.
Marvelous answer to our "doing and undoing!" All our doings put away forever, and all that is wretched and undone put away as well, and a scene of unclouded joy opened to us, where every blessing is ours in Christ! How shall we ever be able to praise, as we should, the love, the wisdom, the righteousness, the power that lies behind it all?
Reader, do you know anything of this, or does what we say sound as the jargon of an unknown and strange language in your ears? Consider it; get down low before God and learn in His presence His own way of blessing through and in Christ. H. P. B.