One summer day with a party of friends, I climbed a high mountain. Reaching the summit we found ourselves beneath a cloudless sky in brilliant sunshine. Gorgeous butterflies flitted about and birds of lovely plumage perched on the trees. The clouds lay beneath us, rolling around the mountain sides like foamy waves. We were high above them and were looking down upon cloudland.
By and by the clouds grew thicker and we heard the ominous roll of thunder. Lightning flashes followed one another with increasing rapidity and torrents of rain were seen falling on the valleys and plains below. But we on the mountain top were high above the storm. To us the wild tempest was a thing afar off, left behind us.
A similar thing has taken place in the spiritual sphere. A terrible storm raged around the Savior when He hung as the Sin-bearer on the cross of Calvary. All the judgment due to us fell on Him. In bearing our sins He bore the full weight of the penalty due to those sins: an awful storm indeed!
But all this passed. The storm spent its full strength on Him. Rising from the dead He has left it behind Him forever. And He has left it behind Him for us as well as for Himself. Now the believer may know that his sins are gone forever, and that he belongs on the mountain top of resurrection life and glory where his Savior is.
Such is the place that Christ the Son of God has won for us. It is as certain as if we were actually there. If we but take our stand by faith along with Him, where He is, we may look down and back on the blackness of the storm into which His love made Him willing to go for our sakes. The storm has spent its strength and fury.
Now as believers in the holy, spotless Lamb of God we are brought, as it were, into all the sunshine of the mountain top. There God's great love is the very atmosphere that we breathe. And this is not because of what we are, nor anything that we have done. It is because of the dying and rising again of our great Savior. We can truly say, if we belong to Him, that the storm of God's wrath is behind us forever.