“DO you believe that God loves you?” was the question addressed to me when I was in the deepest anxiety to get saved.
“No,” I answered most emphatically. “How could God love such a sinner as I am? If God gave me what my sins deserved, He would put me into hell fire.”
I had a strong sense of condemnation in my conscience, and could understand the justice of God dealing with me as my sins deserved, but I had no knowledge of His love as displayed in Christ to sinners like myself.
In fact, I believed it was only good people God loved. Conscience and experience alike told me I was not good. I could not deceive myself on that point. I tried to make myself good, but was heartbroken to find I had no power in myself to do so. The evil propensities were too strong for me, and constantly overcame every good desire.
I was under the false impression from childhood that if I was good God would love me; hence my efforts to make myself what I thought He would like me to be. I learned afterward it was all because I did not know God’s love.
“Christ died for the ungodly.” And the death of Christ for such is the fullest expression of the love of God. But it was for the “UNGODLY,” not for the good or the righteous or for those who could make themselves better in any way. An ungodly man is a man who, lives without God and in disregard of God. Such all are by nature. I had
WRONG THOUGHTS OF GOD.
Wrong thoughts of God are at the bottom of the misery of most people. Besides, they are at the bottom of every false system of religion. God says, by the lips of David, “I hate thoughts.” Man’s thoughts lead him astray from God. No wonder God hates them. He wants to win man. He wants men to have right thoughts of Himself. Right thoughts in the minds of men are really God’s thoughts. God’s thoughts when allowed their place in the mind always displace man’s thoughts.
Naaman, though afflicted with leprosy, showed his self-importance and vanity when he said, “I thought he would come to me... and strike his hand over the place.” He came to get cured of his malady, but he came not only in the wrong way, he came with wrong thoughts. No medical authority of any reputation would have allowed a patient his own thoughts for one moment. Naaman’s thoughts made him come in the wrong way, and therefore hindered him from getting the blessing as soon as he might.
When he gave up his own thoughts and became as simple and as trustful as a little child, lie got the blessing. When he got the blessing lie did not say, “I thought,” but “Behold, now I KNOW that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.” What a mighty revolution, and all by the acceptance of God’s thoughts!
It puts me in remembrance of a story I once read about a man crossing to America. As he stood on the vessel he thought he saw an approaching storm cloud. This filled his mind with unrest until he learned to his great surprise from one of the officers that the storm cloud was not approaching. It had burst and spent itself far behind the vessel.
The dismay that filled the man’s mind was the result of wrong thoughts. The officer, who knew more than he about storm clouds, gave him light thoughts which cleared his troubled mind and set him at perfect peace. The officer’s thoughts displaced his thoughts. The result was the enjoyment of peace. In the same way the sin-distressed soul learns God’s thoughts toward him in Christ, and rests in perfect peace.
THE IGNORANCE OF THE BIRDS.
One specially hard, long winter, when the country was covered with frozen snow for eight weeks, many birds died through want of food. Every morning we used to put plenty of warm food behind our breakfast parlor so that my family and myself might enjoy the luxury of seeing the hungry birds get a hearty meal, and all be reminded of the Saviour’s words, “God feedeth them.”
We observed that on the tree behind the house the crows would perch themselves, stretch their necks, look down with a hungry eye at the provision; but, unlike the sparrows, they never came down to partake of what they were so much in need of, and what it only afforded us the greatest pleasure to give.
In looking at them I often exclaimed: “How like those birds are to men who will not have the Gospel they are in the direst need of the Gospel which God is so pleased for men to appropriate to themselves, as needy, helpless sinners.” Then would I say again: “Oh, that those silly birds only knew the real joy it would give me to see them partake freely of what my pitying care has provided for them! They need not fear me.”
They did not know my thoughts, and could not understand my care for them. Hence their dread of coming down to partake of what would have saved them from death, and kept them in the enjoyment of life.
How is it that man is afraid of his beneficent Creator? Has He not showered down blessings more innumerable than the hairs of our head? Is not sin the answer? Sin has made man afraid of God. Yet man’s very sin has been an occasion for God to show greater love to man than He possibly could have done had man not sinned.
He hates sin with a perfect hatred, because it has deprived Him of the confidence of man, His creature, made in His image and likeness! His desire for the restoration of man’s confidence is beyond all expression, save as the cross of His Son has expressed it.
That He might put away sin and lay a right foundation whereby He might bring man back to Himself, and get the affection of man’s heart, He came down Himself to men in flesh.
“GOD WAS IN CHRIST”
Wonder of wonders! Mystery of mysteries! Insolvable to all natural intelligence Of every other event it is the most momentous, most significant. A real MAN but very God., was Jesus Christ our Lord. Though He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, yet He was over all “GOD blessed forever.” If He was David’s Son, yet was He not David’s Lord? If He was David’s offspring, yet was He not THE ROOT of David? The second Man was the Lord from heaven.
“Though in a human form He trod,
Still was the Man Almighty God
In glory of His own.”
As a Man He was made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them that were under the law. Therefore “He was made a curse for us.” This is substitution, without which there could be no true Gospel.
He came not to charge home the offenses that men had done against Him, but to bear the punishment due to them. What other monarch ever acted toward rebels thus? This was all to dissipate the darkness of men’s minds about Him, and bring them out of the ignorance of their natural minds into the marvelous light of His own mind with regard to them.
All the wrong that man has done against Him, God has found a righteous answer for in the atoning sacrifice. Thus has He shown His love. It is undeserved by rebel man. It comes down to us as unmerited favor, which is the purest grace. It would not be grace if I deserved it. Because I do not deserve it, it is grace to me.
What a provision for us, but what cost to God! How deeply we are indebted to Him! As we contemplate our sins, and contemplate His love in meeting those sins in the death of His Only Begotten Son, should it not fill us with wonder admiration and praise?
Sin has been an outrage against Him, and an insult to the justice of His government of this world, of which each one of us is a responsible subject in is no trifle. Each one of us has failed most grievously in the place of trust He has set us in. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Conscience and experience alike are in fullest accord with this statement of Holy Writ. Sin is darkness and death and departure from God. “Her guests are in the depths of hell.”
The Shorter Catechism says: “Man’s chief end is to glorify (really make much of) God and enjoy Him forever.” Splendid definition of the end for which man was created! But has man made much of God, and thus fulfilled his mission in this sphere? Has he not, instead, made much of himself and forgotten God? Has he not lived in utter disregard of His just claims upon him? Has he not too often been ungrateful and unthankful? Has he not often blasphemed His beneficent Creator and served the creature more?
It was said of the lofty, high-minded king of Babylon, “The God in Whose hand thy breath is thou hast not glorified.” This solemn charge covered the entirety of that proud boaster’s life. In consequence, the doom of his kingdom was written in that strange, mysterious handwriting on the wall, “THOU ART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES, AND FOUND WANTING.”
Kind reader, if God laid you on a dying bed, and put all your lifetime of mercies and opportunities in the balance with your sins of utter neglect, ingratitude, and disregard of God, think you would it be otherwise with you? Steady yourself! Think seriously! Answer to Hire with Whom you have to do, and Whom you must surely meet!
Think of the cost to God for your salvation He gave His own Son. He could not give more. Less would not meet the gravity of your condition. Think of the greatness of the salvation wrought out by His dying agony, by the deep, deep, unspoken anguish of His holy soul! Did all this mean nothing? Is all this to go for nothing, se far as you are concerned?
The infinite love of the Son of God hanging on that cross was the expression of God’s thought of you. Nowhere does His mighty voice speak more loudly, both in holy hatred against sin and in love to you the sinner. If you accept His atoning sacrifice for your sins, it will forever clear you of all charge of sin. It will change your mind about God completely.
You will feel that nothing but absolute self-abasement becomes you in the presence of such marvelous undeserved favor. You will no longer have hard thoughts of God. You will learn His love to you, and as the happy result, you will love Him.
Your heart will be filled with gratitude, and your lips with praise; your life hereafter will be for the glorification of God and not of yourself.
Your body, that may have been the slave of the foulest lusts under Satan’s influence, will gladly be presented to God, a living sacrifice, as “not your own.” Thus your life will be a testimony to your friends of what great things the Lord has done for you. It will show that miracles are still being performed of which your new and consecrated life will be an undeniable witness. The moral change in you will be an unanswerable argument against the insidious, blatant infidelity of these days. You may not be able to explain the change in so many words, but to you, at least, the change will be as real as it was to the man who said: “Whether He be a sinner or no, ONE THING I KNOW, THAT WHEREAS I WAS BLIND NOW I SEE.” P. W.