I LOOK around! What can I see?
Heathenism, men worshipping stocks and stones; Christendom that would often disgrace a heathen; yet goodness and wisdom evidenced in the midst of it all.
What can I think?
All is confusion. The goodness and wisdom I see lead me in spite of me to God, and the thoughts of God confound me when I see all the evil. Philosophy, poor philosophy, would justify the evil to justify God.
But when I see Christ, the riddle is gone. I see perfect good in the midst of the evil, occupied with it, and then suffering under it.
My heart rests. I find one object that satisfies all its wants, rises above all its cravings. I have what is good in goodness itself. I see what is above evil, which was pressing on me. My heart has got rest in good, and a good which is such in the midst of and above evil, and that is what I, want; and I have got relief, because I have found in that One what is power over it.
But I go a little further, and I get a great deal more.
I follow this blessed One from whom all have received good, and who has wrought it with unwearied patience, and I hear the shouts of a giddy multitude, and I trace the dark plans of jealous enemies, men who cannot bear good. I see high judges who cannot occupy themselves with what is despised in the world, and would quiet malice by letting it have its way, and goodness the victim of it.
But a little thought leads me to see in a nearer view what man is; hatred against God and good. Oh, what a display! The truest friend denies, the nearest betrays, the weaker ones who are honest flee. Priests set to have compassion on ignorant failure, plead furiously against innocence. The judge washing his hands of condemned innocence. Goodness absolutely alone, and the world, all men, enmity, universal enmity, against it. Perfect light has brought out the darkness. Perfect love jealous hatred. Self would have its way and not have God; and the cross closes the scene as far as man is concerned. The carnal mind is enmity against God.
But oh! here is what I want. Oh! where can I turn from myself? Can I set up to be better than my neighbors? No, it is myself. The sight of a rejected Christ has discovered myself to myself, the deepest recesses of my heart are laid bare, and self, horrible self, is there.
But not on the cross. There is none. And the infinite love of God rises and shines in its own perfection above it all. I can adore God in love, if I abhor myself. Man is met, risen above, set aside in his evil, absolute as it is in itself when searched out. The revelation of God in Christ has proved it in all its extent on the cross. That was hatred against love.in God; but it was perfect love to those that were hating it, and love when and where they were such. It was the perfect hatred of man, and the perfect love of God doing for him that hated him what put away the hatred, and blotted out the sin that expressed it.
There is nothing like the cross.
It is the meeting of the perfect sin of man with the perfect love of God. Sin, risen up to its highest point of evil, and gone, put away and lost in its own worse act. God is above man even in the height of his sin; not in allowing it, but in putting it away by Christ dying for it in love. The soldier’s insulting spear, the witness if not the instrument of death, was answered by the blood and water which expiated and purified from the blow which brought it out. Sin was known (and to have a true heart it must be known) and God was known, known in light (and the upright heart wants that) but known in perfect love, bore which we had no need to hide or screen the sin. No sin allowed, but no ski left on the conscience. All our intercourse with God founded on this—grace reigning through righteousness. (Rom. 5:21).
J. N. D.