Let me illustrate the value of the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:2121If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: (Ephesians 4:21)). Take any truth you like; for instance, man. Where shall I learn the truth about man? Shall I look for it in Adam—a man that listened to his wife after she had listened to the devil—a man who, when God came down, ran away from Him, and even dared to insult God by laying the blame on Him? Shall I look at his sons—at Cain his first-born, or at Abel whom Cain slew? The beautiful grace in Abel was what was of God, not what was of himself. If you pursue the history of man as such, you only find evil and pride and presumption increasing upon him till you give up the whole tale in shame and disgust. And so it would all end but for the last Adam. I find here in every step that He took, in every word that He said, in everything that flowed from His heart and was reflected in His ways, One that never did His own will. Now I learn the beauty and the wonder of a man subject to God upon the earth—the only One who ever walked in perfect, moral dignity, though He was despised of all, and most of all hated by the religious leaders of the world in that day. But how did not God delight in Him? Here then the humbling truth is told. Man has shown himself thoroughly; Jesus, the cross, tells the tale in full.
But suppose another instance: if I look up and think of God, where shall I, of a surety, find Him? In creation? It is all ruined. Besides, to read Him only in the book of nature, is but to have glimpses of power and beneficence. But in the midst of all these large and shining characters of divine majesty, and wisdom, and goodness, scattered up and down through everything that He has made upon the earth, I should also have to face other characteristics, as of weakness, decay, suffering, death, etc. The question arises, Whence do these come? They are as crooked as the others were straight—the latter as full of misery as the former wore the impress of wisdom and power. The result of all this is that, for the mere reasoner in the vanity of man's mind, the understanding gets darkened; and all that can
thus be learned, even from the consideration of that which comes from the hand of God, completely fails to give the knowledge of Himself. I see the effects of another hand there, as well as His own—the hand of a destroyer and liar. And instead of rising up from nature to nature's God, as poets vainly sing, you are apt to sink from nature to the devil who has ruined it all; you fall into the snares of the enemy by the effort to find out God in your own strength.
I want some other way wherein to learn what God is. To gather an evidence of His being is one thing; to know Him is another. I can delight in anything that He has made, but what are His thoughts, feelings, ways, especially to a sinner? If you talk about providence, is there not an Abel suffering and a Cain prosperous? Great deeds were done in the family of the proud murderer, while those who had whatever then shone of the light of God, were disliked and scorned by the world, often weak in their own eyes too, but suffering and cast out wherever faith made them odious to those who had it not. This is an impenetrable enigma to man.
How can he, in the face of such facts, discern the superintending power of a God as conscience tells there is? Constant difficulties arise, and the reason is very plain—it is not in circumstances around, any more than in my own mind, that I can find the truth. Not that there are not traces and indications in providence as in creation, but I want the truth and cannot find it in either.
Then I may come down to the law. Does it give me the truth? In no way. It is not that the law was not good and holy, but it is never called, nor in itself could it be, the truth. Its design was more for making the discovery of man than of God. Its operation was that man might thereby learn what he is in himself. It runs like a plowshare, when directed by the Spirit, into the heart, and lays bare many furrows, and discovers what man never knew was there before. But none of these things shows what God is to man in grace. Not even the law can give the truth as to this. I cannot at all learn by it what a Saviour God is, nor even fully what man is. At the best it declares what a man ought to be as well as do, but this is not the
truth. What I ought to be is not God's truth but my duty. Law was the standard for man in the flesh, and hence it never was given till man was a sinful man. "The law was given by Moses," and not to or by Adam. The commandment laid upon Adam is never called the law, although it was, of course, a law.
Further, you will never find truth, even in the Bible, if you sever it from Jesus. But the moment the same blessed One, who has shown me in His own life and death what man is, has also shown me in the very same what God is, then all the clouds break and the difficulties vanish. Now I know God, beholding Him in Jesus. New thoughts of God dawn on the soul and, submitting to Him, I am made perfectly happy, perhaps not all at once, but as surely as my soul has received Jesus, and learned what the true God is in Jesus, I have eternal life, and shall find unbroken peace; but in Him I receive all that I want, all that God intends for my soul, because the truth is in Jesus. Thus then as a believer, I know God; I know that which the heathen never did nor could reach.