All which the heart needs is made known. His revelation is clearly His
seeking us, and His revelation is His gracious call to us to seek Him.
He is ever found by those who seek. They have not to press through
obscurities to find Him, but the desire to possess must precede
possession in spiritual matters. He is no hidden God, lurking in
obscurity and only to be found by painful search. They who 'seek' Him
know where to find Him, and seek because they know.
3. That whatever may be obscure, the Revelation of righteousness is
clear.
We have to face speculative difficulties in plenty, but the great fact
remains that in Revelation steady light is focussed on the moral
qualities of the divine Nature and especially on His righteousness.
And the revelation of the divine righteousness reaches its greatest
brightness, as that of all the divine Nature does, in the Person and
work of Jesus. Very significantly the idea of God's righteousness is
fully developed in the immediately subsequent context. There we find
that attribute linked in close and harmonious conjunction with what
shallower thought is apt to regard as being in antagonism to it. He
declares Himself to be 'a just (righteous) God and a Saviour.' So then,
if we would rightly conceive of His righteousness, we must give it a
wider extension than that of retributive justice or cold, inflexible
aloofness from sinners. It impels God to be man's saviour. And with
similar enlarging of popular conceptions there follows: 'In the Lord is
righteousness and strength,' and therefore, 'In the Lord shall all the
seed of Israel be justified (declared and made righteous) and shall
glory'--then, the divine Righteousness is communicative.
All these thoughts, germinal in the prophet's words, are set in fullest
light, and certified by the most heart-moving facts, in the Person and
work of Jesus Christ. He 'declares at this time His righteousness, that
He might Himself be righteous and the maker righteous of them that have
faith in Jesus.' Whatever is dark, this is clear, that 'Jehovah our
Righteousness' has come to us in His Son, in whom seeking Him we shall
never seek in vain, but 'be found in Him, not having a righteousness of
our own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith
in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.'
If the great purpose of revelation is to make us know that God loves
us, and has given us His Son that in Him we may know Him and possess
His Righteousness, difficulties and obscurities in its form or in its
substance take a very different aspect. What need we more than that
knowledge and possession? Be not robbed of them.
Many things are not written in the book of the divine Revelation,
whether it be that of Nature, of human history, or of our own spirits,
or even of the Gospel, but these are written that we may believe that
Jesus is the Son of God, and believing, may have life in His name.
A RIGHTEOUSNESS NEAR AND A SWIFT SALVATION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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