Christ, Our All (#4, part 2)

from Alexander Smellie, on what Christ and the Cross means to our hearts and our lives:

“And there was the hiding of His power.”  Habakkuk 3:4

In outside nature and the moral law, the two books whose pages Habakkuk reads, there is simply the shadow of God, nothing more than an outline and a glimpse of what He is.  The sun shone long ago, and it shines today, over the weird wilderness mountains of Teman and Paran; but He is much brighter than the sun.  The commandment given on Sinai is holy and just and good; but He is better than the commandment.  These are but broken lights of Him, these are but rays streaming from His hand; and He is more than they.

I take His power.  My thoughts reel when I try to conceive the magnitude of the universe; and I know that He Who made and fills it must be the Lord God Omnipotent.  And since it is nobler to reign over souls than constellations, His law speaks more loudly still of His sovereign supremacy.  Yet here is merely the hiding of His power.  For there is something which baffles and defies the God of Nature and the God of Sinai.  It is my sin.  I need a stronger God than this, or I shall be undone.

I take His wisdom.  Like Lord Bacon, “I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Alkoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.”  And His precept, simple and comprehensive, broad and high and deep, bears the same testimony to the wise-heartedness of its Author.  Yet these are the hiding of His wisdom.  The Lord of marvelous worlds and perfect statutes—He does not know how to speak a word in season to me who am weary.  It is a task beyond Him.

I take His justice.  Storm and flood and earthquake tell me that it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands. And His taintless law condemns my transgression in unrelenting tones.  Yet, despite these voices, He hides His justice.  There is an awfuller display of the righteousness of God than that which nature in its angriest mood can furnish.  There is a mount more terrible that Mount Sinai, with its blackness and darkness and tempest, before which Moses feared and quaked.

I take His love.  In the sweetness of spring, the luxuriance of summer, the wealth of autumn, the stillness of winter, I gather messages of it.  And had I only been willing and obedient, how abundantly his commandment had crowned me with it!  And yet there is the hiding of His glory, the hiding of His love.  Nature can repair a broken field; she cannot comfort a broken spirit.  The law has its reward for the holy; but it has bitter and hopeless death for me, the chief of sinners.

I cry out for a God Whom neither the starry heavens nor the unerring law can disclose.  In time and eternity I am beggared, disowned, dying, dead, unless He hears me and quiets my cry.

BUT IN CHRIST THE VEIL IS DONE AWAY!

Blessed be His name!  God answers my cry.  He hides Himself in the sunrise and in the law; but He opens His very soul to me in the Gospel.  Teman and Paran and Sinai have their lessons to teach and their uses to serve.  But I turn from them to another hill outside Jerusalem, where the Cross was raised, and where the Only-Begotten Son loved me and gave Himself up for me.  The Old Testament mountains bow their towering heads in humility and worship before little Calvary, and its glory far exceeds theirs.

Is it God’s power I would learn?  I stand undismayed among the thunders of nature.  I keep a proud, determined invincible spirit before the threats and warnings of the broken commandment.  “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”  But I behold God in Christ, obeying where I was disobedient, suffering my death, forgiving my crimson sin.  It is His crowning argument.  It is His mightiest appeal.  It vanquishes me.  My will of adamant is melted and overcome.

Is it God’s wisdom I would see?  I have the lesson-book of the natural world; and I lift my eyes from the writing on the tables of stone.  There is more adequate proof that He is wise.  I find it in the life and death of Jesus.  Here he prepares the path by which His banished can return.  Here He honors every claim and demand of righteousness.  Here He stills all the anxious questions of my awakened conscience, and breathes into me the peace that passes understanding.

Is it God’s justice I would read?  Fire and hail, scorching sun and blighting frost, proclaim the folly of trifling with Him.  The book of His statutes denounces His wrath against the sinful.  But I look into the manger cradle, and I stand with Mary and John under the Cross; and in the lowliness and shame of His dear Son, the Shepherd of my soul, I discern best how holy He is.  Ah!  When these things are done in the Green Tree, how can I doubt the inflexible justice of the Lord?

Is it His love I would grasp?  Let me hear the Father assure me that for Jesus’ sake I have a place among the children.  Let me consider the Son seeking me across the deep waters and through the dark night.  Let me unbar my being to the Spirit, that He may end the days of my mourning and may fill my present and my future with rest. Teman and Paran and Sinai cannot publish a grace so unspeakable and a love so sufficient.  Bethlehem and Golgotha are more wonderful than they.

No longer does the Lord my God curtain and hide His glory.  He tells me His name.  He shows me His heart.  He draws me and I follow on.  The Only-Begotten Son, He hath declared Him.