Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
There may be some reference in the name to the remarkable words of our
Lord Jesus Christ: 'I am the Way. No man cometh to the Father but by
Me,'--words of which the audacity is unparalleled and unpardonable,
except upon the supposition that He bears an unique relation to God on
the one hand, and to all mankind upon the other. In them He claims to
be the sole medium of communication between heaven and earth, God and
man. And that same exclusiveness is reflected in this name for
Christians. It asserts that faith in Jesus Christ, the acceptance of
His teaching, mediation and guidance, is the only path that climbs to
God, and by it alone do we come into knowledge of, and communion with,
our divine Father.
I do not dwell upon the fact that, according to our Lord's own
teaching, and according to the whole New Testament, Christ's work of
making God known to man did not begin with His Incarnation and earthly
life, but that from the beginning that eternal Word was the agent of
all divine activity in creation, and in the illumination of mankind. So
that, not only all the acts of the self-revealing God were through Him,
but that from Him, as from the light of men, came all the light in
human hearts, of reason and of conscience, by which there were and are
in all men, some dim knowledge of God, and some feeling after, or at
the lowest some consciousness of, Him. But the historical facts of
Christ's incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the
source of all solid certitude, and of all clear knowledge of our Father
in Heaven. His words are spirit and life; His works are unspoken words;
and by both He declares unto His brethren the Name, and is the
self-manifestation of, the Father.
Think of the contrast presented by the world's conceptions of Godhead,
and the reality as unveiled in Christ! On the one hand you have gods
lustful, selfish, passionate, capricious, cruel, angry, vile; or gods
remote, indifferent, not only passionless, but heartless, inexorable,
unapproachable, whom no man can know, whom no man can love, whom no man
can trust. On the other hand, if you look at Christ's tears as the
revelation of God; if you look at Christ's ruth and pity as the
manifestation of the inmost glory of the divine nature; if you take
your stand at the foot of the Cross--a strange place to see 'the power
of God and the wisdom of God'!--and look up there at Him dying for the
world, and are able to say, 'Lo! this is our God! through all the weary
centuries we have waited for Him, and this is He!' then you can
understand how true it is that there, and there only, is the good news
proclaimed that lifts the burden from every heart, and reveals God the
Lover and the Friend of every soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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