IT is told of a celebrated composer that he was once asked what he considered the best music. He replied, “No music.”
Possibly his meaning was the finish of a soft cadence, or the pause between two movements, which accentuates both. His musical conception favored the dying notes as the best.
Whatever may have been his idea, it furnishes a feeble illustration of the marvelous way which God took to give effect to His mighty power.
Were you asked, dear reader, what was the mightiest way in which God’s power ever acted, what would you answer? Would your mind revert to the irresistible forces of the elements―of wind, of water, of thunder? Or would you think of the unfathomable manner in which the spheres are kept in their places, of the secret forces of the realms of space?
Elijah of old, in gloomy mood, viewed, unmoved, the apparent results of the raging elements; but on hearing the still, small voice of God, he wrapped his face in his mantle as he heard God speak.
Let God speak, then, of His mighty power, and His own peculiar method of revealing it. Marvelous import is contained in the words of Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God!
“We preach Christ crucified.... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1)
Just consider this, “Christ crucified,” the power of God. Has it ever caused you a thought that that Wondrous Person, Who gave life to all, Who was the Life, Who had life in Himself, Whose life was the light of men, Who is the Prince of life, once lay in the grave? That He was here on this earth in the place of death? Crucified in weakness.
Why was He there?
He was there the power of God. No power was seen in Him that day. Earth saw no power in a dead Man. And heaven was to learn the mystery of it. Yet here was the mighty power of God. Do you understand, dear reader, why Jesus hung there?
There was one scene God never forgot. It was that dark moment in Adam’s life when he listened to the tempter’s voice, and believed the lie that the enemy told. Adam elected to have the power the enemy offered instead of the power he had been given of God. No greater privilege or power, we believe, had been given to any creature. The range of earth’s creation under him, and made only a little inferior to the angels.
The enemy told of power as of gods, a higher range of creatures than those in human form.
Also, in accepting his offer, Adam lost the power God had given him, and came, as a disobedient and rebellious creature, under the power of death.
But God loved His willful creature, and in spite of rebellion and sin He came out of heaven to offer man a greater power than he had lost, and to make a way from out of the prison of death in which he was confined.
“For as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
There was no other way for man out from the power of death than for a deathless divine Person to bear its curse, and annul the might of the devil.
This Jesus, Jehovah of old, did, out of love to man. Explain it away some would; but death as the penalty of sin remains, and faith only in the Saviour, and His precious blood shed on Calvary, brings peace to the soul.
When Jesus died no power was seen in Him; but the rocks rent, the whole creation was shaken, and the authority of darkness was broken forever. No power, yet the mightiest of all power. The overturning, majestic, moral power of God, exerted in love.
Again was that power put forth with glory, in the resurrection of Christ from among the dead (see Ephesians 1.).
Have you, dear reader, come under the gentle, overpowering sway of God’s love? Or is He a stranger to you? Ah, He cares for you! He has given His only-begotten Son to die, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life!
“He that heareth My word,” said the Son of God, “and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life”