God is the seeker. We do not have to soften His heart to pity or turn Him toward us. We feel our hardness toward Him, and we think Him hard. We listen to our consciences that accuse us, and we think we hear His voice in them.
Conscience can never take the place of revelation. Only God can tell me what He is, or what Christ did for me, or how my soul can be at peace with Him. For all this I must listen to His Word alone. It alone can bring in the true, eternal light in which conscience and heart alike can find their rest and satisfaction forever.
It is a wonderful thing to be able to give a free and general offer of salvation—to say: Christ died for all. Come to Him, and He will give you rest. Yet there are those who need even closer attention—those who lie wounded by the roadside. They need, not merely the call of the gospel, but the grasp of strong, tender hands and the binding up of the wounds. There are those who dare not reach out soiled hands to Him because of their pollution and who can only be liberated and brought out of their isolation by that direct touch of His in which a new, undreamed-of life for them begins.
But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night which the Lord passed
through,
Ere He found His sheep which was lost.
The cross was the only place where He could overtake these wandering ones. It is only as we realize what the cross is that we find the arms of this mighty love thrown round us. Here He has come where we are. Here is the place in which, without rebuke, we can claim Him—our substitute and sin-bearer.
The terrible cross of Calvary has destroyed forever the distance between us. The crucified One is ours, for the death and judgment He has borne are ours. “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)). Our penalty He has paid for us. He finds us, and immediately we are freed and uplifted by the might of this redemption and by the living power of our Redeemer.
“ The Son of man is come
to seek and to save
that which was lost.”