Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 29
Let us remember that this doctrine is not in the New Testament, but is
an attempt to explain certain experiences that are ascribed in the New
Testament to Jesus, the Father, the Holy Spirit. Even the hardiest
thinkers caution us that our knowledge of God is limited to a knowledge
of His relations to us: Augustine says, "the workings of the Trinity
are inseparable," and Calvin, commenting on a passage whose "aim is
shortly to sum up all that is lawful for men to know of God," notes that
it is "a description, not of what He is in Himself, but of what He is to
us, that our knowledge of Him may stand rather in a lively perception,
than in a vain and airy speculation." But let us also recall that in
this doctrine generations of Christians have conserved indispensable
elements in their thought of God:--His fatherhood, His Self-disclosure
in Christ, His spiritual indwelling in the Christian community. Wherever
it has been cast aside, something vitalizing to Christian life has gone
with it. But at present it is not a doctrine of much practical help to
many religious people; and it often constitutes a hindrance to Jews and
Mohammedans, and to some born within the Church in their endeavor to
understand and have fellowship with the Christian God.
We may adopt one of two attitudes towards it: we may accept it blindly
as "a mystery" on the authority of the long centuries of Christian
thought, which have used it to express their faith in God--hardly a
Protestant or truly Christian position which bids us "Prove all things;
hold fast that which is good"; or we may consider it reverently as the
attempt of the Christian Church of the past to interpret its discovery
of God as the Father Lord, revealed in Christ, and active within us as
the Spirit of love; and use it in so far as it makes our experience
richer and clearer, remembering that it is only a man-made attempt to
interpret Him who passeth understanding. The important matter is not the
orthodoxy of our doctrine, but the richness of our personal experience
of God. Dr. Samuel Johnson said: "We all _know_ what light is; but it is
not so easy to _tell_ what it is." Christians know, at least in part,
what God is; but it is far from easy to state what He is; and each age
must revise and say in its own words what God means to it. Here is a
statement in which generations of believers have summed up their
intercourse with the Divine. Have we entered into the fulness of their
fellowship with God?
Do we know Him as our Father? This does not mean merely that we accept
the idea of His kinship with our spirits and trust His kindly
disposition towards us; but that we let Him establish a direct line of
paternity with us and father our impulses, our thoughts, our ideals, our
resolves. Jesus' sonship was not a relation due to a past contact, but
to a present connection. He kept taking His Being, so to speak, again
and again from God, saying, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." His every
wish and motive had its heredity in the Father whom He trusted with
childlike confidence, and served with a grown son's intelligent and
willing comradeship. Fatherhood meant to Jesus authority and affection;
obedience and devotion on His part maintained and perfected His sonship.
Further, we cannot, according to Jesus, be in sonship with this Father
save as we are in true brotherhood with all His children. God is (to
employ a colloquial phrase) "wrapped up" in His sons and daughters, and
only as we love and serve them, are we loving and serving Him. In Jesus'
summary of the Law He combined two apparently conflicting obligations,
when He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with _all_ thy heart,
_and_ thou shalt love thy neighbor." If a man loves God with his all,
how can there be any remainder of love to devote to someone else? What
we do for any man--the least, the last, the lost,--we do for God. We do
not know Him as Father, until we possess the obligating sense of our
kinship with all mankind, and say, "_Our_ Father."
Do we know God in the Son? There is a sense in which Jesus is the "First
Person" in the Christian Trinity. Our approach to God begins with Him.
In St. Paul's familiar benediction, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
precedes the love of God. We know God's love only as we experience the
grace of Jesus. We cannot experience that grace except as we let Jesus
be Lord. Absolute and entire self-commitment to Him allows Him to renew
us after His own likeness and equip us for service in His cause. He
cannot transform a partially devoted life, nor use a half-dedicated man.
Those who yield Him lordship, treating Him as God by giving Him their
adoring trust and complete obedience, discover His Godhood. To them He
proves Himself, by all that He accomplishes in and through them, worthy
of their fullest devotion and reverence. He becomes to them God
manifest in a human life.
While in the order of our experience Jesus comes first, as we follow
Him, He makes Himself always second. He points us from Himself to the
Father, like Himself and greater; "My Father is greater than I." There
is a remoteness, as well as a nearness, in God; it is His "greaterness"
which gives worth to His likeness. To use a philosophical phrase, only
the transcendent God can be truly immanent. We prize Immanuel--God
_with_ us, because through Him we climb to God _above_ us. Jesus is the
Way; but no one wishes to remain forever en route; he arrives; and home
is the Father. Jesus is the image of the invisible God; but the image on
the retina of our eye is not something on which we dwell; we see through
it the person with whom we are face to face. We know God our Father in
His Son. Every aspect of Jesus' character unveils for us an aspect of
the character of the Lord of heaven and earth. Every experience through
which Jesus passed in His life with men suggests to us an experience
through which our Father is passing with us His children. The cross on
Calvary is a picture of the age-long and present sacrifice of our God as
He suffers with and for us. The open grave is for us the symbol of His
unconquerable love, stronger than the world and sin and death. God's
embodiment of Himself in this Son, made in all points like ourselves,
attests the essential kinship between Him and us--God's humanity and our
potential divinity.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|