063. CHRIST INTERPRETS GODS DECREES

CHRIST INTERPRETS GOD’S DECREES

There is such a thing as the plan of God. Our restless age, with its pushing, its hurry, its change, has had but little time or inclination to think of the divine decrees. In days of persecution and defeat men think much of God; in days of success and triumph they think much of themselves. But occasionally, in an interval of the world’s turmoil, we hear the still small voice; we stop in the midst of the rush, and rejoice that there is something fixed; that behind the phenomenal there is the noumenal; that underneath the temporal there is the eternal. However men may come and go, God is forever and ever the same. Whatever men may imagine or plan, there are decrees of God, as eternal and unchangeable as himself. The universe is the unfolding of God’s plan; unless the humblest creature and the minutest event are embraced in that plan, the universe is no longer a universe—an ordered whole— but a dreary haphazard conglomeration; unless there is, One God who ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event

Toward which the whole creation moves, the progress of the world is as dreadful as the driving on into midnight darkness of an express train, without headlight or engineer, and sure to plunge sooner or later into the abyss. But if there is a great divine purpose, and if God works all things according to the counsel of his own will, we have an anchor to the soul sure and steadfast, that entereth into that within the veil. No storm can wreck our peace, since our faith holds to the immovable rock of God’s wisdom and truth and love.

All this would be true even if we did not know what that purpose was. Job could trust God though he could not interpret him. But we are better off than Job: we have an interpreter of the divine counsels. In the second Psalm there is One who says: "I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine Inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." There is One who perfectly knows God’s purpose and whose mission it is to declare it. This is the meaning of that fifth chapter of Revelation in which, as in the second Psalm, heaven is opened to our view. In the blaze of the divine Majesty and in the right hand of God himself there is a book sealed with seven seals. It is the book of God’s decrees. There is weeping because no man nor angel can loose the seals or open the book. But at last One who sits on the right hand of God rises from his place of equality with God, takes the book from God’s own hand, and makes known the mystery of God. In Christ then we have the revelation of the divine purpose. The omniscient Saviour, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb that was slain, he in whom gentleness and glory, sacrifice and power meet, he alone can read or declare the decrees of God. Let us weep not, for Christ hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof. To declare the divine decree is not simply to proclaim it,—it is to execute it also. In the second Psalm the Son is bidden not only to ask for power, but to exercise power. The chapters that follow that fifth chapter of the book of Revelation only describe Christ’s opening of one seal after another, and his translation of God’s decrees into the actualities of history. He who is omniscient to read every secret word of the book of God’s decrees, is also omnipresent and omnipotent to turn that word into living reality, and to fulfill every letter of it. All the ongoings of the physical, intellectual, and moral universe, therefore, are Christ’s fulfillments of the efficient or of the permissive decree of God. I am bound to see Christ in nature, executing the divine will and revealing the divine wisdom in the unfailing regularity of physical law. Doubt that there is design in nature? Why, nature is nothing but design! Seas and stars, the firmament and the floods, are nothing but a thin veil that hides the all-working Christ, in whom all things consist, and the whole universe holds together. Ought I indeed to say that these things hide him? Are they not the very mind and thought of Christ made visible to me, just as the human face or the human words reveal the thinking feeling soul within? For lo ! creation’s self is one great choir. And what is nature’s order but the rhyme Whereto the worlds keep time, And all things move with all things from their prime.

Yes, William Watson’s verse has in it more of truth than he himself intended; for nature, though only a partial revelation, is yet a real revelation of Christ, and of the thought and wisdom and will of God in him.

Human history is in like manner Christ’s execution of the eternal purpose of God. Through the free wills of men, with all their cross-purposes and their ill intents, another mightier will is fulfilling itself, compelling the evil in spite of itself to serve the good, and making the wrath of man to praise the holy God. Society, with its confusion and strife and injustice, is like the buzzing and disorder of a hive of bees. As the bees come and go, each bound on its own mission, they have no idea to what end they labor; yet all unconsciously they are building up the symmetrical structure of the honeycomb that witnesses to a higher wisdom working through them. Men work in a similar way, without thought of any beyond themselves, but Christ reduces their selfish and warring activities to harmony, and brings out a great result of which they never dreamed. Christ is "the Light that lighteth every man." All reason and conscience, all science and philosophy, all civilization and education, all society and government s in short, all the wheels by which the world moves forward toward its goal have a living spirit within the wheels, and that living spirit is Christ, declaring, unfolding, and executing the decrees of God. Christ, the Son of man, is the throbbing heart of humanity, and all humanity feels the pulsations of his love and power.

If this is true in creation and providence, much more is it true in redemption. Here too Christ is the great executor of the divine plans. We begin our Christian lives fancying that it is we that have chosen Christ; after a time we learn the meaning of his words: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." We find that we cannot hold on in our Christian way alone; it dawns upon us that without his guidance we never could have gotten into that way at the first: conversion would have been impossible without regeneration.

Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there’s room, When thousands make a wretched choice And rather starve than come?

’Twas the same love that spread the feast That gently forced me in;

Else I had still refused to taste And perished in my sin.