YOU are near the top of the hill,” was a remark I made to an old man, bowed with age, and carrying a load, whom I overtook on his way home.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“And when you reach the top of the long hill you have climbed for such a length of years, what then?” said I.
“Ah, that is a mystery. There have been many dictators in the world who have each given their own opinion of the hereafter, and which of them can you believe?” he rejoined.
“But how do you know there is any hereafter?” I asked of him.
“Because I learn from the decay of creation that it had a beginning; but if it had a beginning He who formed it had none, and if He had no beginning He has no end. He is supreme.”
“Quite right,” I said; “creation is the witness to the eternal power and Godhead of God (Rom. 1:2020For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20)). It teaches us what He can do, for it is His work; but, though it teaches much, it does not tell me all I want to know. I feel that I am a sinner, and the knowledge of His eternal power and Godhead, His infinite holiness too, only terrify and drive me from Him. What am I to do in such a case?”
“You have to come to Him, for He never wastes any part of His creation,” he replied.
That, I thought, was a remarkable answer. It gave the denial to the common dream of “annihilation,” or the coming-to-nothing of that which God has made.
“But,” I said, “what about my sins? They are not a part of God’s creation. I alone am personally responsible for them, and am guilty on account of them. How can I meet God with my sins?”
Now, dear reader, this is a most profoundly important question, and I do beg your deepest attention to it. It is of comparative insignificance how you regard creation. You will not be damned because you are poorly instructed in its details. This matter is not one of the head but of the heart; it deals with your spiritual relation to God. How can you meet God in your sins? In reply to this, it is necessary to leave the sphere of creation and enter another, that of redemption―leave that of “eternal power,” and enter one of full and perfect grace―leave that which bears witness to the incomprehensible majesty of God, and enter one in which He has deigned to make Himself comprehensible and knowable―so that we sinners, can attain to Him, and find Him, and love Him who has first loved us. Great was my pleasure to hear from the lip of my aged friend the answer, “You need a Saviour for that!”
“Just so,” I said, “but here the mystery is solved; here the light breaks in, and the darkness is dispelled. A Saviour is the full answer. The blood of the God-given Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, is that which washes me from all my sins, and fits me to meet, in perfect righteousness, and to know, in perfect grace, that God, who, in creation, is so far beyond me. Redemption supplies what my sinful soul requires.”
Let me quote one little passage from a chapter which is, I may say, devoted to the solution of this now misnamed “mystery.” Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus... that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3).
Oh! how is it we so frequently hear the word “mystery” in this connection? “It is all mysterious”― “No one can tell”― “How can anyone be sure,” and such like words ring in our ears daily. And they would all be true if God had not spoken. The whole thing would have been a mystery if Christ had not died and risen, and the word of God had never been written.
But now this mystery is solved, and the believer may enter on the ground of divine, and, therefore, positive certainty. God “is just and the justifier of him that believeth on Jesus.” Only think of that! Grace forms the spring, redemption the ground, and a free justification the blessed result, so that he that believeth in Jesus is, here and now, justified, and, what is so unspeakably blessed to know, God is just in so doing. Could words be more plain? Could revelation be more explicit? Could mystery be more completely removed? Impossible! It is “all plain to him that understandeth.”
All I wish you to do, reader, whatever your difficulties may have been, ―scientific, moral, or spiritual, ―is that you should quietly consider the passage to which I have drawn your attention. It is a revelation of God’s righteousness, and shows how He, the Supreme, infinite in power, majesty, and holiness, is, at the same time, infinite in grace, and that, whilst creation, itself so complex and profound, is the witness of His power, skill, design, breadth of reach, and minuteness of touch, yet redemption―alas, so little regarded―declares what the splendors of creation never can, the full depths of His love, truth, grace, and holiness; and believe me, what you and I need is not a God outside of us, as in creation; nor a God against us, as in the law; nor a God beyond our ken, as in providence; but a God who, as in redemption, has given for us His own and only Son, that by His death, and faith in it, we might live, and by whose resurrection we might have confidence and a sure title; and by whose word we might know, for a bright and positive certainty, that we are justified, and made His children,―this, I repeat, is what we need, and it is, thank God, the very provision He has made. The mystery is gone! All is plain! The truth is fully revealed! Creation may speak and bear its testimony, but sounding louder and sweeter are the silver notes of redemption, and a full and perfect salvation for lost sinners through its mighty work. “The darkness is past, the true light now shineth.” J. W. S.