Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
I do not know that the Psalmist thought of that when he gave utterance
to my text, but whether he did it or not, it is true that the 'moment'
spent in 'anger' is a part of the 'life' that is spent in the 'favour.'
Just as within the circle of a life lies each of its moments, the same
principle of inclusion may be applied to the other contrast presented
here. For as the 'moment' is a part of the 'life,' the 'danger' is a
part of the love. The 'favour' holds the 'anger' within itself, for the
true Scriptural idea of that terrible expression and terrible fact, the
'wrath of God,' is that it is the necessary aversion of a perfectly pure
and holy love from that which does not correspond to itself. So, though
sometimes the two may be set against each other, yet at bottom, and in
reality, they are one, and the 'anger' is but a mode in which the
'favour' manifests itself. God's love is plastic, and if thrown back
upon itself, grieved and wounded and rejected, becomes the 'anger' which
ignorant men sometimes seem to think it contradicts. There is no more
antagonism between these two ideas when they are applied to God than
when they are applied to you parents in your relations to a disobedient
child. You know, and it knows, that if there were no love there would be
little 'anger.' Neither of you suppose that an irate parent is an
unloving parent. 'If ye, being evil, know how,' in dealing with your
children, to blend wrath and love, 'how much more shall your Father
which is in heaven' be one and the same Father when His love manifests
itself in chastisement and when it expands itself in blessings!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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